Well, here it is, the last canto before I head off to the big wicked world of college, and I'm having to swat pyromaniacs off of my paper with a very large stick. sound of wood hitting something Stop that! Go away! You aren't in this canto! You're a supporting character!...God, at the rate this is going, I'll be singing "You're so vain, I bet you think this story's about you..." before long. Well, it's NOT. You hear me, Albatou? It's about Raistlin and Soren...and, in this installment, Ken.
I own NOTHING here...except the right to say who's featured in a chapter and who isn't, so hint hint to the guy trying to crawl into my outline when he thinks I'm not looking.
Judecca, Canto X: Ken
My abdomen still hurt, but that wasn't why I had decided to stay in bed. Raistlin had looked at where Ike had hit me and proclaimed the damage to be nothing more than a very large, painful bruise, but he hadn't been there when it had happened and didn't understand why I'd been scarred. I didn't care about bruises or aches. I wasn't afraid of physical pain. What terrified me...petrified me...undid me completely was...
"So is he really your evil twin or did you just discover someone cloned you without your permission? Yamaki says there's no way it was a clone, it couldn't have looked that old if it had been, but I think your human science works in some pretty dodgy ways sometimes and, frankly, you don't know what you're doing and make up a buncha theories to cover the fact. Now, Digimon? If it works, it works, no questions asked. Need to scan something to become stronger? Nobody wonders how or why, they just kill the closest sap stupid enough to get in their way. Want to create utopia? All you gotta do is..."
"Lucemon." I was shaking with pain and rage but didn't want him to notice either. "Go away."
"It's Cupimon now, remember?" He huffed and hopped off the bed, trying to stalk off indignantly but failing. "See if I include you in utopia when the time comes."
"We've been through that," I muttered, rolling my eyes to the ceiling. "It's impossible." Utopia could not possibly come about—true utopia, with everyone in harmony—but then again, if someone had asked me two days ago if the Digimon Emperor could rip himself from my body I'd have shivered, but put on a brave face and say the Spore would never control me again. I'd finally mastered it. I'd overcome that darkness...and I had a right to be proud of that achievement! Except now it looked like I'd never really been in control after all. Something had given him life. And whatever sins he committed...they were my fault, for failing to stamp out the lingering traces of who I'd been, buried deep within remorse and anger and fear. The Emperor's faults were my faults, magnified. That was all the Dark Spore had done, magnify them. Every whiplash, every Control Spire, every innocent life that suffered...every building destroyed by Kimeramon's blind madness...they had all been the result of my imperfection. And I'd dared, in that state, to call myself a perfect person!
Another impossibility, I'd have said...if not for Sam...and others, others who achieved a level of self-reliance I could only dream of, of disconnection I longed for but at the same time shrank from...others like Davis, and...
"Ken, if you are not dressed and ready for work in fifteen minutes I shall turn you into a cricket and swallow you whole. I have neither the time nor the patience to be mollycoddling children today." Raistlin swept through the room like a gale heralding a hurricane, yanking my sheets off and tossing my clothes at me. "Fifteen minutes." The door slammed, and he was gone.
What did he need me for? I was useless. Yesterday's battle had proved that. I didn't want to go to work today. Then I'd see all the wreckage...destruction I'd been helpless to prevent. Without Wormmon, what was I? A nuisance. A hindrance. A supposed "team member" who'd gotten himself injured in a spontaneous fit even he didn't understand. To use Raistlin's word, a child.
That all had to change. But how?
"Ken, I need my robe. Open up. Don't make me blast the door down," Soren , apparently of one mood with Raistlin this morning. Automatically I got up and fetched the object...but in the back of my head the gears had begun to turn, and I saw at last the course I had to take.
O0o0o0o0o0
"Don't even think about apologizing," growled Raistlin as he picked at his chicken broth; Riley had him on a liquid diet due to his "illness" yesterday and he was certain she was doing it to be spiteful. I didn't see why there should be a problem, as Raistlin never ate much of anything, but announcing that would be tantamount to suicide. And I couldn't die now. Not when I finally had a plan. "That twit of a necromancer supplied an ample amount for the entire household."
"Um, I wasn't going to. Um..." I bit my lip. This was going to be harder than I'd thought. I had him alone for now, but how long would that last? I didn't want any of the others around if he turned me down. When he turned me down. Maybe this was a bad idea after all...but Davis would say I'd never know unless I tried, and I needed to be more like Davis today. Davis wouldn't care that the enemy was wearing his face. Davis was never useless. "I...I want you to teach me magic."
Raistlin's spoon clattered into the bowl. Drops of soup splashed on the table, but those normally fastidious golden hands didn't bother to wipe them up. "You what!" he hissed, grabbing my arm.
My voice was going to crack, I knew it, and with it would crumble my resolve. Stiffening, I tried to look grave and responsible, tried to feel grave and responsible, but was suddenly only cold. "I want to be a mage like Soren. I want to be your apprentice. I don't want to be useless or fail anyone ever again. I'm tired of people getting hurt because of me, and if Kaizer continues to have his way with this town that's exactly what's going to happen. I can't...I can't just shelve books and feed fish knowing that there's a despot on the loose whose every crime is mine. And when I create things with the goggles, it takes too much time. In a fight, I haven't got that luxury. I need instant power. I need magic. I'm tired of letting the Emperor hurt me. I want...I want the Emperor to hurt because of me this time!" I stopped, surprised at the ferocity of my own voice and words. Did I really want that? Did I really want another person to suffer?
But it's not another person, came a voice from my gut. It's yourself. You want to wring yourself out until there's nothing left of the boy who called himself Emperor, because he keeps coming back and he's stronger than you. You couldn't leave him behind in the illusion, back in the battle with MaloMyotismon when everyone—including yourself—thought you'd gotten over him for good. He was just waiting.
"I see." Raistlin slowly withdrew his hand, finally took his napkin and mopped up the table. "Unbutton your shirt."
"What?"
"Just do as I say." Fumbling with my buttons, I watched him stand and place the napkin down absentmindedly, eyes far away and feverish with the glitter of calculations. "So this is what you want. I search for an apprentice and you claim the eagerest has been under my nose all along?" He shot me a glance. "I had not expected this of you."
Neither had I, I felt like confessing, but kept up my strong front. "I may not have Soren's talent, but...I'll make up for that. I'm a hard worker."
"I know," he mused, and I blinked: had that just been a compliment? "Yet I am not sure you understand."
He turned to me, looked me in the eyes. "The magic will not come effortlessly," he breathed, half warning me and seemingly half in rapture with what he was saying. "You must give of yourself, all of yourself, sacrifice any other happiness you might have found in this life. But in return, the power you will gain is immense. Power over life, over death..." His already soft voice trailed off. "Over the very souls of others." Sliding one golden hand into a pocket of his robes, he withdrew a pendant adorned with a single green stone, shot through with red: an opal. A bloodstone. "Why, with this artifact alone..."
Raistlin could move swiftly when he wanted to; in an instant he was at my side, gingerly pressing the bloodstone against my bare chest. "Were I to speak the incantation, this would suck the life-force from your body and transfer it to me," he whispered. "I have done it before, to one more powerful than you. This is what the magic has taught me. This is the power you will be seeking if you ask for help from me. Is that what you really want?"
Sweat speckled my forehead; I breathed heavily, feeling the bloodstone's cool surface on my chest, smelling the rose petals hung around Raistlin's waist. The world seemed dark and cold to me, suddenly, with nothing filling the void but that pressure, that smell, and the fire flickering behind a pair of eerie hourglass eyes.
Swallowing, I met their gaze. My mouth was dry, but I spoke anyway. "If it will help me protect what I love...then yes, that is what I want."
There was no tremor in my voice, I noted; I felt no spasm cross my features. The movement of my chest beneath the stone was deep and regular. I was not afraid, I told myself, or if I was I would crush that fear. There had to be something within me stronger than it.
Seemingly satisfied, Raistlin withdrew the bloodstone, secreted it again. "Very well. Prepare to depart with Soren and I in five minutes' time. Your apprenticeship begins now."
o0o0o0o0o0
"I can't believe it," muttered Soren as we worked our way through the stacks at the library. "Why would you want to do a stupid thing like that? The man is ruthless. The fact that we need him doesn't mean we should entrust absolutely everything to him!"
He hadn't sounded so sure last night. I had heard him crying to Raistlin in the other room, and my soul had echoed his calls. But he was still angry at being used, and with that I could most definitely sympathize. Raistlin was behaving in a way that, had I not been so desperate, I would have fought against with all my might. But I had to save my energy for Kaizer now. "Don't you want us to get stronger?" I asked. "If I learn the magic, maybe Kaizer will go down faster."
"Kaizer is mine," snapped Soren. "Just because you look the same doesn't mean he hurt you most."
"It's not a competition," I shot back.
"Don't give me that! We both have our reasons for wanting Kaizer gone. Of course we're going to compete to dispose of him." Soren glared bitterly at me. "It would make more sense for us to team up and take him down together, but I don't think we will. We're beorc, and beorcs are such a messed-up race, when you get right down to it. They don't deserve to lord themselves over others..."
"Give people a chance," I argued, already used to Soren's strange word for the human race. "Most of them are just looking for an answer they aren't even sure exists."
"And you've found yours?" he asked. "In the magic?"
I nodded. "I think so." I hoped so, I wished so. I would make it so.
Soren returned to his shelf perusal. "I found my answer, too." His voice hardened. "Then Kaizer took it from me."
The cries of a million Digimon whose friends I'd enslaved echoed in that sentence, and I had to grit my teeth and close my eyes to stay standing. What about them, Soren? You aren't alone. Whereas I...no one else in the group, except maybe Lyon, seemed overly remorseful about what they'd done in the past, "Recovering" Evil Madmen Support Group or no. Yet even Lyon was more ashamed than anything else, trying to get through each day without messing up rather than trying to fix whatever problem he'd created, and I...I couldn't understand that. An eye for an eye. By my own rules, I should have never been given a second chance. That's why I believed in humanity. They were all so much better than I was.
"If you two are quite done your little spat, we have a situation on our hands here," reported Raistlin, leaning on a half-empty bookcase. At first I didn't understand what he was talking about, then it dawned on me. We'd come to work despite the destruction outside for the sake of picking up spellbooks and other arcane volumes for Soren and I to study, and were in the right section, but...
"All the books on magic have been checked out," I noticed aloud.
Raistlin shot me a half-amused, half-disgusted look. "Most observant."
"So what do we do now?" asked Soren. "Challenged Soren" would be closer to the point, but he was trying to mask his contempt—and obviously hating every minute of it. This was one individual who could not stand treading lightly.
Raistlin switched his staff to his other hand and swept purposefully past us, back towards the circulation counter. "We pay a little visit to whoever has them out."
o0o0o0o0o0
"Ptol me In ?" I wondered aloud, looking at the flickering electric sign above the triangular castle-shaped building.
"Ptolomea Inn," replied the armored man standing guard, his lance barring the thick wooden doors. "Some of the bulbs burned out."
"I see," said Soren, obviously not impressed, but the guard was too busy listening to Raistlin explain our situation (or a highly edited and occasionally fabricated version of our situation) to hear the remark.
"...and we must speak with this patron at once. As librarians concerned for our collection's well-being."
"Nothing will happen to your books here, Raistlin. They wouldn't like it." The guard jerked his head in the direction of a sign on the door.
"Demon Kings Yuuri Shibuya and Orsted, Proprietors...Now Hiring Demon King for Third Tower?" Soren read aloud.
"They each get a tower, see? Orsted sleeps in the one to the right, Yuuri in the one to the left, and the one in the back behind the courtyard and the pool is empty." The guard did not exactly sound thrilled to be having this conversation. "Ah, just go in. But if you try to sell anything..."
"We wouldn't dream of it," Raistlin assured the man in his best patronizing tone, and herded the two of us in.
"Think we should tell Lyon about that vacancy?" Soren whispered to me as Raistlin went to speak with the man behind the counter immediately inside the inn, a tall blonde fellow wearing orange armor. The blending of the medieval and the modern within Judecca puzzled me; at first I'd thought it was an ordinary twenty-first-century-type town, but I'd been noticing an increase in swords, robes, and other paraphernalia that was anything but. Why, even this inn was sandwiched between a weapons vendor and a coin-operated laundromat!
"Huh? No, I like having him around."
"He's okay. Think I could pass for a Demon King?"
"Thinking of leaving again?" I asked, wondering if Soren had an impish side I'd somehow overlooked.
"Perhaps." Our conversation was cut short as Raistlin beckoned us to come speak to someone, a girl a few years older than me working behind the counter in a barmaid's dress. Her dark brown hair was cropped short; it framed her round cheekbones and accented her pouty mouth. Her brown eyes darted from me to Soren to Raistlin—the latter two in robes today instead of street clothes—with apprehension.
"I'm Yuka Sugimoto," she said in answer to Raistlin's query. "What do you want?"
"I'm the head librarian of the Judecca Public Library," Raistlin replied smoothly, producing a business card from who-knows-where, "and I understand you checked out quite a few volumes yesterday. Concerning...sorcery."
Yuka gestured around the room. "Look at this place. My one boss is a high-schooler with a soul-sucking sword. The other one wears full body armor even when he sleeps. I haven't read fantasy in a long time. I need to brush up on what I might be dealing with, especially..." Her voice trailed off.
"This isn't the first time you've been in a strange world, is it?" Raistlin asked gently. I started, unaware Raistlin could sound so concerned, then realized as Soren sort of growled what the mage was up to. He was trying to charm her into revealing information. Raistlin could be charming. Soren could be impish. Who knew?
Yuka wouldn't meet his eyes. Not many people care to. "No," she admitted gruffly. "And I screwed up real bad in the last one, so I'm trying again, okay? I never wanted another chance. I was fine with a normal life. I didn't ask to be brought here."
"No one said you did. Now listen, Yuka. We need to borrow those books back from you. It's a matter of some urgency, for you're right, this place is dangerous. But we can make use of those books, Yuka, while you can only learn what might creep up and smite you in your sleep—not that there's much chance that Kaizer will resort to random massacre of civilians." He was smiling, but it was a predator's smile. Kaizer's smile, I thought for a moment, the smile of a man drunk on control, but banished that train of thought. Raistlin had no such aspirations. I couldn't allow myself to believe he did. Recovering Evil Madman, Recovering Evil Madman...
He was still talking, and she was looking at him directly now. "Of course, we can give you a role that will help you make a difference. We shall return the books and visit, as often as we can, and you can report anything that makes you uneasy. With your position here, in the center of a popular gathering area, you can detect potential difficulties better than almost anyone. You'll get home safely, Yuka. You have my word as a wizard of the..." Raistlin's voice caught in this throat and he nearly coughed; I was surprised he hadn't slumped into a fit already. "...of Lunitari's order." He pulled aside his black cloak to reveal robes the color of dried blood beneath them. You see, Ken? Red. Not black. Nothing to fear...no reason to worry when your mind is finally made up. Red. Not black.
But what color was the soul behind that red curtain?
O0o0o0o0o0
"So we got books and a spy out of that," Soren remarked to no one in particular, sitting down in the chair opposite Raistlin's gargantuan Head Librarian desk. "If you wanted to know what was going on in that inn, you could have used a spell."
"What, and discover too late that Kaizer has a mage on his side who can trace it? No, apprentice, as weak as they are, sometimes people are the best weapons. She will not betray us."
"You sound so certain." We could all hear the "why" hanging in the air, but Raistlin made no answer to Soren's silent query. Raistlin was in control. That was all we, as apprentices, needed to know.
"Don't you two have jobs?" Raistlin asked suddenly, and we both jumped up and scurried out. Well, I did. Soren has probably never scurried in his life.
"On second thought, Ken, come back here," Raistlin's soft voice drifted out of the doorway, and I was instantly ashamed of the abject nature of my exit. "Sit back down."
I did. "What is it, Raistlin?"
"You need to know this before you develop any fanciful ideas about the nature of the magic. I can see those castles you're building, and as with all imaginary structures the foundations are less than solid. Ken, you may not have what is necessary to be a mage."
Two hours in his service, not a single spell, and already dismissal? What had I done? "I don't understand, sir. How have I failed you?"
He waved a ridiculing hand. "Not that. I mean within. The gods choose to bless people in some ways and curse them in others. I was given this body, but the magic in return. Feanor was given enormous talents, but unfortunately not the sanity to match. Lucemon was not given much of anything save an overinflated sense of self-worth, but that itself can be more damaging than any other virtue or vice. But I digress. You are not from a world of magic, Ken. You may not have the innate ability."
I hadn't thought of that. Now what would I do? "You mean you've changed your mind?"
"I mean don't do anything stupid thinking that the magic will save you, because it might not!" Raistlin snapped. "No one gets everything they want, yet you seem to think it's your God-given right. Such is the luxury of the young, I suppose, but you should be intelligent enough to deduce your place in the world."
Was he trying to give me advice? And what did he mean...my place in the world? I opened my mouth to ask him but never got a chance.
"Excuse me? Head Librarian? The...ah...gentlemen at the desk told me you would be here." The speaker was a wiry woman in about her mid-30s, shaking a bit where she stood and speaking in a definite "library voice" whisper. I groaned. The "gentleman" in question was most likely Feanor, whom we had literally chained to the desk to keep him from rushing off to reclaim his stolen son. I felt bad for Maedhros, he was one of the reasons Kaizer was going down, but I would have felt worse if Feanor had gotten hurt after he finally realized he cared about his heir. Why had Kaizer had to make everything so complicated for everyone? Why couldn't those destructive tendencies just stayed inside of me? I wanted to purge the suffering from my body, but I would have gladly suffered alone if the world's safety had been guaranteed.
"What do you want?" Raistlin hissed irritably. I had the feeling he'd been looking forward to chewing me out for something, and frantically I tried to determine what I'd done wrong. My place in the world? Did he think I'd unleashed Kaizer? No, he couldn't be that stupid...
"Sir, my purse was just stolen from my car!"
Well. You don't expect to hear that in a library. That sort of thing happens in supermarkets and malls, but never libraries. Of course, giant robots never target libraries either, yet one had yesterday. This Judecca was a weird, weird world. Funny how I could think that as it crumbled around me...
"I need Wormmon," I muttered as I followed Raistlin to the parking lot. "I'm talking to myself."
"Oh, you did that even with him around," Raistlin replied like I'd been talking to him. "Now be quiet! I think I know what has transpired...Ah! There." He stared up into the sky with a satisfied expression on his face. I squinted but couldn't see anything. Well, maybe the silhouette of a bird, but...
Suddenly the silhouette was growing and expanding until it took the shape of a man with black wings crashing to the ground, a purse clenched tightly in his hand. "Dastards," he swore at us as we approached him, his beady eyes narrowed on either side of his aquiline nose, his dark blue hair mussed. "What spell was that, and how did you...?"
"I suspected as much, Naesala." Raistlin pried the purse free, handed it to me. "Take that back to the woman, Ken. Now. While I have you at my disposal, King Kilvas, I have a little job for you. I assure you it pays well..."
"It better," the man replied as I hurried off, the pilfered item clenched tightly in my hands. I wanted to stay around and find out what Raistlin and the winged man were discussing...but common sense said otherwise. The man had not looked friendly—in fact, he'd reminded me a bit of Raistlin's old apprentice Dalamar. Something about the lazy, liquid arrogance of the face...of the bearing, even in an uncomfortable situation...how had Dalamar known he had the magic? How would I? Raistlin, Raistlin probably had been born knowing.
"I better have it," I told myself, suddenly very homesick and wanting Wormmon more than ever, though I was glad he was home safe in Tokyo (at least I hoped he was). "If I don't, I don't know what I'll do."
o0o0o0o0o0
The woman left with her purse and Raistlin returned a few minutes later, sitting not in his usual desk in the back offices but instead at Yamaki's reference post. Faint sounds coming from the filing cabinet told me Cupimon was asleep within, and a stray rose petal caught under the leg of Raistlin's swivel chair told me why. But what I didn't know was...
"Where's Yamaki?" I asked, dropping off some papers of Soren's. He was already halfway through his book on wizardry, and I had to keep looking terms up in a Dictionary of the Arcane.
Raistlin seemed fascinated by whatever was on his computer screen. "I sent him away," he replied absently. "He's running an errand for me."
"Spell components?" I asked, impatient to know whether or not my newfound hopes were in vain.
Raistlin snorted. "Trust that buffoon with things of that nature? Hardly. No, I sent him to meet a friend. One whom...we all owe...a great deal." His tone implied the conversation was over, so I left the papers on his desk and went back to my work. Kaizer...Soren...the strange attack yesterday...the bird-man and the inn today...and now Yamaki visiting someone Raistlin felt indebted to? What was this Judecca, anyway?
"Where do you think we are, Soren?" I asked him, picking up my pen and watching Soren dip his quill. To each their own, I guess.
"I don't know and I don't care. I'm staying long enough to get Ike out, and that's it," he said, but I caught a glimpse of parchment beneath his spellbook. A map? Of what?
"You're confused and lost too, aren't you?" I asked softly. "You aren't as resolved as you sound. You--" I stopped as he looked up, my face flushing red. Idiot! I told myself. How could you? How dare you?
"Are you looking for some sort of confession of friendship?" Soren asked. "Because you won't get one. I don't like you, and I don't like Raistlin. I don't even like Lyon all that much, and he's the most decent one in your entire crew. But I'll give you this. I like the way you operate. Not Raistlin, you. No fancy subtleties, no tricks, no evil genius mastermind who thinks he has to run the show. You're hotheaded and you're impulsive and you take everything personally...but you're shy at the same time and not about to sink to the level of hiding it behind a mask. You're real, Ken. And I don't think you know that. Now stop bothering me." He bent his head over his work, and I could hear his quill tip snap as he pressed it down. "Damn."
He wasn't completely right about me, I mused. I'd worn a mask for most of my life, real or imaginary. Heck, be honest: I'd worn one earlier that day. But for him to miss that...had I really improved?
"I've never been Ken. But I'm going to live the rest of my life as the kind and gentle person Wormmon wanted me to be!"
That was a promise I'd made long ago, a promise I wasn't sure I was keeping. I wasn't feeling kind or gentle at the moment. I wanted to destroy someone, even if that someone did happen to be an aspect of myself.
"Find your place in the world." Was that what Raistlin had said? Some version of that. He and Wormmon wanted the same thing from me...yet one was my master, the other my self-decided inferior (though I thought of us as equals). And wasn't that what I wanted, too?
What did I want?
Vengeance. Acceptance. Wisdom. Perfection. Second chances. Finality. Freedom.
I couldn't have them all!
"I wish I were you, Yamaki," I sighed as I bent over my dictionary. "I at least know how to repay a debt."
O0o0o0o0o0o0o0
a/n: Oh look, another long one. Sorry Ken was so emo; he's interesting to work with, since he's an angry emo and not a mopy emo. Lyon...Lyon's a toddler emo.
Wait, what?
Coming up next: We finally find out where Yamaki's off to...but that might not be posted for a while. When next you hear from me, I'll be at college.
So I'll see you all there!